Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 4
Item 4 is consider and take appropriate action on an order concerning outdoor burning in the unincorporated areas of Travis County.
is the fire marshal nearby?
we did get from the fire marshal an email yesterday indicating that our drought -- that kbdi, which is the drought index, is at 634, which is still not good news in terms of whether or not we should authorize outdoor burning in unincorporated areas.
>> that's correct.
judge, Commissioners, herschel lee, Travis County fire marshal.
as evidence of the reason to keep this burn ban in place, yesterday there was approximately a five-acre fire on the east side of state highway 130 in precinct 1 and 2 areas.
and I'm not sure the cause, but this is an area typically where you see cigarette fires or equipment malfunction fires.
so this is not the time to lift our burn ban.
the current burn ban will not expire until November 16th.
as an added note, this upcoming weekend is the opening of general deer season in Texas.
quite a number of people will be going into the field and encourage people to be very careful.
if you are smokers, be sure of how you discard your smoking materials, that all the fires and embers are out.
this is not a time for open camp fires.
if you are cooking, preparing food, warming your quarters, whatever you are doing, that needs to be done with a propane-type fuel equipment.
so my recommendation is to leave the current burn ban in place, and as I said, it expires November 16 and we'll be back depending on conditions.
there's a chance of some rain in the upcoming weekend which will be very welcome.
>> that's what we need really, a sort of pretty heavy --
>> we do.
I've heard pete baldwin mention a number of times what we really need we need it to rain about three days in a row, but we only need it to rain about an inch or day for three or four days in a row.
we need a slow, soaking rain.
the small fuels dry quickly, but in current conditions even the large fuels are dry and will burn completely.
so we need a slow soaking rain that will allow all the fuels that are out there to soak up moisture.
>> court members, questions, comments?
by taking no action we leave the current burn ban in place.
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